Newspaper’s Future in the Browser(by @baekdal ).

The battle between native vs. HTML5 is going intensify a lot in 2011. As you can already see, there isn’t much difference between them. Especially not for the media industry.

I have long decided not create a native iPad app for baekdal.com, opting instead to create a web app. But, when I started creating it back in March, I realized that I didn’t even need a web app. A website, coupled with integration to RSS readers, Flipboard etc provided me with the same result.

For native apps to make sense, you need to have a pretty specific use-case in mind. Just trying to make newspapers look fancy won’t cut it. You can do that in HTML5.

On the other hand, HTML5 is also not the right tool for the job. The entire thing is designed to handle web pages, not web apps. Meaning that every HTML5 web app out there is one big workaround, trying to get around limitations of HTML.

The web app world seriously needs AML (Application Markup Language), not HTML5. We need a language that is designed to render as an app that can handle interface templates, asynchronous loading, threading etc.